* Interior Department Cites Species Extinction as Evidence the
Endangered Species Act Works
* No Link Between Global Warming and Wildfires
* Could Vulnerable Democrats Benefit from President's Heritage
River Designations?
*New Releases from The National Center for Public Policy Research

Interior Department Cites Species
Extinction as Evidence the Endangered Species Act Works

In a public relations blunder of monumental proportions, the
Interior Department recently cited failures of the Endangered
Species Act (ESA) -- including the outright extinction certain
species -- as evidence that the ESA works. In May, the Interior
Department announced that more than two dozen species would either
be downgraded from their endangered and threatened statuses or
removed from these lists altogether.

"Our new policy, to emphasize delisting, could alter the
terms of the debate over the future of the landmark 1973 conservation
law. For we can now finally prove one thing conclusively: The
Endangered Species Act works. Period," said Bruce Babbitt,
Secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, in making the announcement.
"In the near future, many species will be flying, splashing
and leaping off the list. They made it. They are graduating."

Apparently, a number of these species will only be flying,
splashing and leaping off the list with a little help from the
Grim Reaper. According to the National Wilderness Institute, five
of the species targeted by Interior for delisting are now extinct.
Four of the species targeted for delisting never existed. At least
eight other species were never threatened with extinction and
shouldn't have been listed.

It now appears that the Interior Department cited the proposed
delistings as successes of the ESA by mistake. The Interior Department
based its claim on an internal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
document that included a list of plants and animals that might
be considered for downlisting or delisting. In their haste to
demonstrate the worth of the Endangered Species Act, officials
at the Interior Department did not stop to consider that species
recovery is only one of several possible reasons for species delistings.

Wildfires may be on the rise, but -- with all due respect to
the Vice President -- this has nothing to do with global warming.

Since the 1920s, wildfires have been on a more or less steady
decline. The average number of acres burned has fallen from 12.4
million per year in the 1920s to just 2 million acres in the 1980s.
Improved fire suppression capabilities, forest fire prevention
education programs such as "Smokey Bear" and the "Dixie
Rangers" and other factors all played a part in the success.

But since the beginning of this decade, there has been an uptick
in the number of fires nationwide. Neil Sampson, who served as
chairman of the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters, explains
why: "We've been living through a period when fire suppression
capability grew faster than the fire hazard... In the late 1970s,
something different started to happen. Any dry weather period
began to be accompanied by a greatly increased amount of wildfire...
[T]he natural resource conditions... had been made more fire-prone
and dangerous... by our past success at stopping the fires that
would have reduced fuel buildups." In other words, the increased
risk of fire is the result of excess timber and vegetation that
provides fuel for fires. While advancements in fire suppression
were able to keep pace with the increased fire risks of larger
fuel loads for a while, they are no longer able to do so. Complicating
matters further is the fact that environmentalists -- including
the Vice President -- frequently stand in the way of forest management
policies that could help reduce these fuel loads.

Could Vulnerable Democrats Benefit
from President's Heritage River Designations?

President Clinton's designation of 14 rivers as "American
Heritage Rivers" may have been designed to help vulnerable
House Democrats win elections this fall, rather than to protect
the environment. Because American Heritage River (AHR) designation
can mean millions of dollars in federal aid, AHR designations
have been coveted by Members of Congress eager to show their constituents
that they can bring home the pork. Included on the President's
list were: The Blackstone and Woonasquatucket Rivers, the Connecticut,
the Cuyahoga, the Detroit, the Hanalei, the Hudson, the Upper
Mississippi, the Lower Mississippi, the New River, the Potomac,
the Rio Grande, the St. Johns River, the Upper Susquehanna and
Lackawanna Rivers and the Willamette. A preliminary analysis of
this list suggests that close to two-thirds of all congressional
districts with AHRs are currently represented by Democrats. Of
that number, nearly one-third are represented by Democrats who
won less than 60% of the vote in their 1996 election contests.
Among these Congressmen are Leonard Boswell (D-IA), Lane Evans
(D-IL) and Sam Gejdenson (D-CT), who received 49%, 52% and 52%
of the vote, respectively.

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